Pakistan’s farmland is steadily losing its fertility. Decades of ploughing, burning and heavy chemical use have drained the soil of the organic matter that keeps it productive, and farmers now spend more each season to harvest the same crop. A recovery path exists, and it is well understood. A set of farming practices known as regenerative agriculture, which means disturbing the soil less, keeping it covered, rotating crops and feeding it with compost rather than chemicals alone, rebuilds fertility while cutting the farmer’s costs.
These methods are not an untested import. Trials on Pakistani farms have already shown that they use about a quarter less water and cost a third less in inputs, while making the land more resistant to heat and drought. The food they produce is healthier, and once certified, it can be sold at substantially higher prices in the world’s organic markets, where Pakistani rice, fruit and cotton already go but earn only ordinary rates. What stands between these results and the average farmer is machinery, market access and a clear policy signal, and all three are within the government’s reach. This article first explains what the practices are, then examines the condition of Pakistan’s soil, reviews the evidence from local trials and regional experience, and closes with the policy measures that follow from that evidence.
Understanding Regenerative Agriculture
Regenerative agriculture is farming that returns more to the soil than it removes, and each of its practices serves a plain purpose. No-till farming means sowing the new crop directly into the field without ploughing it first. A plough turns the soil over, which releases its stored carbon and moisture into the air and tears apart the web of microbes and fungi that feed plant roots. A no-till planter instead opens a narrow slot, places the seed and closes it, leaving the soil’s structure and biology intact, while the tractor makes fewer passes and burns less diesel.
The second set of practices keeps the soil protected once it is left undisturbed. Cover cropping and mulching keep the ground covered through the year: a cover crop, such as berseem or mustard grown between main crops, is planted not for sale but to shield and feed the field, while mulching spreads crop residue over the surface for the same purpose. Covered soil stays cooler, loses less moisture to evaporation, suppresses weeds, and slowly converts the residue into fresh organic matter. Crop rotation then changes what is planted each season so that the land is not drained of the same nutrients year after year; alternating cereals with legumes rebuilds fertility naturally and breaks the cycles of pests and disease.
The final element replaces purchased chemistry with biology. In place of synthetic fertiliser and pesticide, the system relies on compost, on biofertilisers, which are living microbes that make nutrients available to the plant, and on biological pest control, which uses beneficial insects and natural preparations instead of broad-spectrum spray. Soil managed this way does what chemicals were being bought to do: it cycles nutrients to the roots, holds water like a sponge, and draws carbon out of the atmosphere and stores it. This is why regenerative fields both withstand climate stress and help reduce it, and it is also why their absence is proving so costly.
The State of Pakistan’s Soil
That cost is now visible in the national numbers. Soil organic matter across most of Pakistan’s cultivated land sits below 1 percent, against the 2 to 3 percent a healthy soil holds. Agriculture produces close to a quarter of national output, employs 37 percent of the workforce and is the main source of income for roughly 70 percent of the population, so the condition of this one resource shapes household incomes across the country. Farming also takes the largest share of the nation’s water, with a handful of crops consuming more than 90 percent of available surface water.
Current practice deepens the damage rather than repairing it. Ploughing exposes the soil’s stored carbon and moisture, and the biology that feeds a plant is disturbed with every pass. Farmers then buy more fertiliser to make up the difference, which is why input costs have climbed above half the total cost of producing a crop. The pattern is most visible in the rice belt each winter: of the 8.5 million tonnes of rice straw produced annually, between 3.6 and 5 million tonnes are burned to clear fields for wheat. Crop burning causes nearly a fifth of national air pollution, and air pollution costs Pakistan an estimated 6.5 percent of GDP a year and 4.3 years of average life expectancy. The straw that becomes smoke in November is the same organic matter the soil needed in October. It is against this background that the results of Pakistan’s own field trials deserve attention.
Evidence from the Field
The practices described above have been tested on Pakistani soil, and the results have been measured. On-station and on-farm trials conducted with the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council and the National Agricultural Research Centre, under the Climate Innovation Challenge supported by the World Bank, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, combined no-till precision planting, permanent raised beds and organic mulching across farm clusters in Punjab and Sindh. They recorded 20 to 30 percent less water used, 30 to 40 percent lower input costs, 20 to 30 percent lower total cost of production and at least 10 percent less seed, with emissions falling because moisture and carbon stayed in the soil.
These figures translate directly into the economics of an ordinary farm. A crop that needs a quarter less water and costs a third less to grow carries a wider margin and a smaller loan. Soil that holds more organic matter also holds water longer, so the same field stands up better to a heat spell or a late monsoon, and in a country where drought and flood now arrive in the same year, that buffer is insurance the farmer does not have to buy. The benefits extend to the consumer as well, because food grown on biologically active soil carries more micronutrients and fewer chemical residues, a consideration of real weight in a country where four in ten children under five are stunted.
Regional experience confirms that these gains survive the move from trial plots to entire farming populations. In 2016 the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh launched its Community Managed Natural Farming programme, built on the same principles and delivered through village institutions and women’s self-help groups rather than a new bureaucracy. The programme now reaches about 1.3 million farmers, roughly a fifth of the state’s total. An independent evaluation by GIST Impact found that participating farms earned 28 percent more per hectare, cut input costs by 44 percent, and raised yields by 8 to 26 percent depending on the crop, while the programme reports water savings of up to half on participating fields.
Pakistan has taken its first steps in the same direction. Punjab has committed Rs 10 billion to more than 23,200 pieces of farm machinery, including 5,000 super seeders and straw shredders at a 60 percent subsidy. Crop residue burning is already banned under Punjab’s smog rules, backed by seasonal Section 144 orders and fines. Draft national organic standards and an accreditation framework were validated in 2024 with the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, PARC, the Pakistan National Accreditation Council and the Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority. The individual components are therefore in place, but they do not yet work together as a coherent national programme, and closing that gap is the task of policy.
Policy Priorities for the Federal Government
The first requirement is clear government advocacy, because farmers change their methods when they see the state stand behind a practice rather than merely permit it. The Federal Government should openly champion regenerative farming: endorse it as policy, put extension workers and demonstration farms behind it, and let progressive farmers who already practise it host field days for their neighbours. The campaign already has its slogan, drawn from Punjabi itself: rajj ke pao te rajj ke khao, feed the land its fill and eat your fill. That one line carries the whole idea, that what the soil is given comes back as food. The same advocacy must state plainly that tilling should go, promoting reduced tillage now and retiring the deep plough over the next ten years through provincial targets rather than sudden bans.
Advocacy will only carry weight if it is matched by enforcement. Punjab already bans crop residue burning; what is missing is consistent follow-through and a fair alternative for the farmer. Penalties without machinery push farmers into a corner, and machinery without penalties leaves the smoke. Mulchers, balers and straw supply chains should therefore arrive in the same season the ban is enforced, so that straw is worked back into the field as mulch and organic matter instead of burning over it.
Neither advocacy nor enforcement succeeds unless the machinery is within the farmer’s reach. Zero-till planting costs about half as much to operate as burning and ploughing, yet 85 percent of Punjab’s farmers cultivate under 10 hectares and cannot buy equipment outright. The locally made planters available today reach only 40 to 50 percent precision and serve a single crop, while imports cost more than most farms can bear. The answer is to build accurate, multi-crop planters, raised bed makers and mulchers in Pakistan, and to finance rental fleets that farmers hire by the acre. The country’s engineering base, including its defence production sector, is capable of this.
Once the machinery exists, public money should reward behaviour rather than inputs. Support today subsidises fertiliser and seed; it should instead pay farmers for verified practice, meaning fields sown without tillage, residue kept on the land and cover crops planted, which makes every rupee measurable. Nor does the financing need to fall on the federal budget alone. The Green Climate Fund has committed about USD 332 million to Pakistan across eleven projects, and a proposal that pairs adaptation with cuts to crop-burning smoke fits its mandate well. Once soil carbon is measured reliably, carbon-market revenue follows.
The programme should also be run as a nutrition programme, not an agricultural one alone. Food grown on biologically active soil carries more micronutrients and fewer chemical residues, and safer produce was among the measured outcomes of the Pakistani trials. In a country where four in ten children under five are stunted, that makes soil restoration a public health measure as much as a farming one. It should therefore be designed and reported jointly with the health side of government: its indicators aligned with the Pakistan Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy, its progress reported against nutrition targets alongside yield and cost, and its produce channelled into school meal and maternal nutrition programmes where these operate. Framing it this way also widens the financing pool, since nutrition budgets and donors can then fund it alongside agricultural ones.
The final element is the market, which is what sustains the transition after public support ends. Without certification a farmer cannot prove the claim, and without proof there is no premium. Regeneratively grown food sits at the top of the organic range, because it is grown on soil that is being rebuilt, and the market it can enter is large: global organic retail sales reached about EUR 145 billion in 2024, organic imports into the EU and US rose 12 percent in a single year, and certified organic produce sells at an average 59 percent premium over conventional in the United States. Pakistan ships rice, cotton, fruit, dates and herbs into these markets today, almost entirely uncertified and at ordinary prices. A national certification and accreditation body, built on the standards already drafted, turns better farming into higher export earnings.
These measures must finally be held together institutionally, because agriculture is a provincial subject and no single government controls the whole chain. The workable design is a national framework with provincial flexibility: the Federal Government sets direction, funds machinery, establishes the certification body and negotiates financing, while provinces adapt delivery to their own crops and landholdings. Done this way, a single programme serves the exports, environment and equity goals of URAAN Pakistan at once.
Conclusion
Soil degradation is gradual and easily overlooked, and its recovery is equally quiet. The evidence from Pakistan’s own fields shows that this recovery is profitable for the farmer, and international markets stand ready to pay a premium for its produce. The transition will take a decade, and its progress will be measured in soil organic matter rather than in announcements. The decision to begin, however, can be taken now.
References
- 1. Pakistan Agricultural Research Council and National Agricultural Research Centre, Sustainable Agriculture Technology on-station and on-farm trials, Climate Innovation Challenge, supported by the World Bank, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, 2021–2022.
- 2. International Growth Centre, Crop residue burning in Pakistan: a systems approach towards sustainability. https://www.theigc.org/blogs/climate-priorities-developing-countries/crop-residue-burning-pakistan-systems-approach
- 3. Government of the Punjab, Environmental Protection Act smog rules and seasonal Section 144 orders on crop residue burning; see Dawn, Burning of crop residue, garbage banned in Punjab. https://www.dawn.com/news/1711379
- 4. Business Recorder, Punjab govt to provide super seeders and paddy straw shredders to farmers at subsidised rates, April 2024. https://www.brecorder.com/news/40298872
- 5. Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF), programme overview. https://apcnf.in/
- 6. GIST Impact, Natural Farming Through a Wide-Angle Lens: True Cost Accounting Study of Community Managed Natural Farming; reported in Mongabay India, July 2023. https://india.mongabay.com/2023/07/community-based-natural-farming-outshines-other-farming-practices-in-andhra-pradesh-in-all-aspects/
- 7. FiBL and IFOAM Organics International, The World of Organic Agriculture: Statistics and Emerging Trends 2025. https://www.fibl.org/en/info-centre/news/global-organic-market-hits-all-time-high-in-2024
- 8. LendingTree, Organic vs conventional produce price analysis, January 2025 to January 2026. https://www.lendingtree.com/debt-consolidation/organic-vs-conventional-study/
- 9. United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Organic agriculture. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-environment/organic-agriculture
- 10. Green Climate Fund, Pakistan country programme. https://www.greenclimate.fund/countries/pakistan
- 11. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Transforming the Indus Basin with Climate Resilient Agriculture and Water Management (GCF FP108). https://www.fao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/1201646/
- 12. Government of Pakistan and UNICEF, National Nutrition Survey 2018. https://www.unicef.org/pakistan/national-nutrition-survey-2018
- 13. Pakistan Agricultural Research Council and CABI, Review and validation of organic agriculture standards and accreditation framework for Pakistan, July 2024. https://parc.gov.pk/NewsDetail/ZWFiNTU2NjAtYTUyYS00ZjZmLThlZDEtZDZjOTkwY2M2YjJk